I am getting ready for my A King’s Ransom book tour, but I
wanted to get this newsletter out before I go in case any of you might be able
to attend one of my readings. I love getting to meet my readers!

I am delighted to report that the first advance reviews for
Ransom have been good, one from Booklist and one from Kirkus. Would I have
mentioned it had they been unfavorable? I’m glad I was not put to the test.
Ransom will be published in the US and Canada on March 4th and on March
13th in the UK. I believe the publication date Down Under is early March, too.

I confess to having ambivalent feelings about closing the circle
with Ransom. It is always exciting (and a bit worrisome) when a new book is
published. But I am not sure I am ready to let go of the Angevins. For five
books and nigh on twenty years, they’ve been my house guests, and I am going to
miss them. Richard will likely make a few appearances in the next book, Outremer—the
Land Beyond the Sea, but I’m afraid I’ve said farewell to Henry, Eleanor, and
the rest of their Devil’s Brood. Well, Henry did manage to snare a scene in
Ransom, and if I ever am able to resume my medieval mysteries, Eleanor will have
some more time on center stage. So I’ll definitely be motivated to revive Justin
de Quincy’s career as the queen’s man. Justin does appear in Ransom, though,
along with his nemesis, Durand de Curzon; I’d promised Justin’s Facebook fan
club that I’d let him infiltrate the action, and it was fun to have him riding
out on missions for Eleanor again and sniping with Durand in his spare time.

Here is my itinerary for the book tour.

TUESDAY, MARCH 4th at 7 PM
Chester County Book Company
West Goshen Center
975 Paoli Pike
West Chester, PA 19380

This officially ends the book tour, but I will be at the Tucson
Festival of Books on Saturday, March 15th and Sunday, March 16th.
http://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org

We are planning another Richard III Tour this September, and I
will post the details on my website and Facebook pages once everything comes
together. With luck, we might be able to visit Richard’s new resting place,
assuming that a decision has been made by then whether Richard will be buried in
Leicester or York.

This has been one of the worst winters on record, with severe droughts in
California, unending snow and ice storms in the Midwest and Northeast and New
England, even snow in the Deep South. Conditions are even worse in the UK, for
their storms have caused horrific flooding. And my friends Down Under tell me
they are enduring their hottest summer in decades. So here’s hoping that Mother
Nature shows us some mercy in the coming weeks.